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Monday, 17 February 2014

Hi and welcome. Today I'm sharing the layout I've used as my DT piece for Anything But A Card.
Challenge 32 is about using your crafty ideas and stash to complete a line from our tic-tac-toe board... up. down, diagonal... three in a row!

For my layout I used the bottom row, ribbon/trims, black and lace. The black outer background has been doodled with liquid pearls. The background has been made of strips of satin and tulle with ribbons, braids, laces, pearls and other trims added.
The photo was taken on our wedding day... no, unfortunately I didn't have any of my wedding dress material in the piece, but I did have a fragment of a nieces wedding dress lace trim.

There's still time to play your tic-tac-toe at Anything but A Card, so pop on over to see what the rest of the team did with their takes on this theme, at: http://anythingbutacard.blogspot.ca/ . We'd love to see your art here.
Cheers, Di

Saturday, 15 February 2014

Hi and welcome. It's been an inky month for the current challenge at ARTastic. We have a fantastic inspiration piece to get creativity flowing.

Joshua Miels "Pretender"

I found this inspiration piece very striking and I loved the way the background was made up of free-form, flowing lines surrounding the image of the woman.
With my take on this, I decided to use a photo taken at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, NSW.
I used heavy A3 watercolour paper for my background and used gesso to start building layers through a stencil. While it was wet it was spritzed with Dylusion Ink Sprays. These were quite vibrant and to tone them down IO re-gessoed through the stencil again, before adding black and red inks and manipulating the paper, as well as blowing on them, to allow them to run freely.

I also added some blue splashes to reflect some of the colours in the photo.
The faces and inspirational sentiment were stamped on tissue paper. The music tissue is a piece of Tim Holtz tissue wrap. For some reason, when I see mountains I always think of songs about mountains, particularly 'Climb Every Mountain' from the 'Sound of Music'.

I really love the way that tissue allows the underlayers to peep through.

On the back, I've added the Legend of the Three Sisters, There are a few different versions, but this is the one I like the best.

'In Australia, the mysterious Blue Mountains rise high above lush rainforests and deep valleys. In the area where lived the Gundungurra people there rises an outcrop topped by three rocky formations, known as The Three Sisters. This is the story of how they came to be there.
Long, long ago, the mystical land of Gondwana was beautiful, peaceful and untouched. In Gondwana there lived Tyawan, a Clever Man of the Gundungurra people. He had three daughters called Meenhi, Wimlah and Gunnedoo, whom he treasured above all else.
In a deep pool in a hole in the valley, there lived a Bunyip, a huge evil creature who loved to feast on human flesh, particularly that of young girls and women. Its cry was harsh and horrible and if you heard it, the only safe thing to do was run away as quickly as possible. Everyone feared the Bunyip.
If you needed to pass its hole, it was important to creep very quietly so that it was not disturbed. When Tyawan had to pass the hole, he would leave his daughters safely on the cliff above, behind a rocky wall- just in case!
One day when waving goodbye to his daughters, he descended the cliff steps down towards the path near the Bunyip's hole. While the girls were waiting and chatting on top of the cliff, a huge centipede suddenly appeared. Startled, Meenhi screamed, jumped up, picked up a stone and threw it at he centipede.
The Bunyip, angry at being awakened, roared and dragged himself through the split to see the terrified girls cowering in the ledge. His evil eye widened in delight at the feast before him.
Tyawan looked up and saw the Bunyip reaching for his daughters, so he pointed his magic bone at the girls and immediately turned them to stone so they would be safe there until the Bunyip had gone and then Tyawan would change them back to their former selves.
But the Bunyip, angered at being deprived of its prey, chased Tyawan through the forest and up the mountain where he found himself trapped. So Tyawan used his magic bone again and changed himself into a Lyre Bird and glided away. Everyone was safe. But then, in dismay, Tyawan realised he had dropped his bone whilst changing.
After the Bunyip had gone back to his deep, dark pool, Tyawan glided down to the forest floor and searched and searched for his magic bone.
There he can still be seen to this day in the shape of the Lyre Bird, scratching and searching the forest floors of the Blue Mountains, looking for his bone, calling to his daughters above and feeding on insects while he searches.
The Three Sisters stand silently watching him from their ledge, hoping and hoping that one day their father will find his magic bone and be able to turn them back to Aboriginal girls".

Saturday, 1 February 2014

Hi! Another month for some playtime at Pixels and Paper. This month our inspiration comes from this fabulous poster.

How will you use this to play? Maybe you will use the colours, the joy of dance, movement....
For my take on this I looked at the suggested movement and used some of the colours to make a layout.
I started with a dotted paper from Bo Bunny, gessoed through a stencil and while still damp, sprayed it with Perfect Pearls Mists.

Under the sea you can find many strange and wondrous creatures, including the gorgeous Spanish Lady Nudibranch, one of the sea slug family. This is what the image suggested to me the moment I saw it. The photograph used has come from a public domain site.

To go with this theme, I added stamped marine creatures and chipboard pieces. These were finished off with liquid pearls and Lumiere acrylic paints. Braid, webbing, net and flat bead 'bubbles' were added.